In its efforts to foster young innovation and entrepreneurship in terms of digital services, FIWARE has lately organized some challenges for developers using our technology to build their own apps. Do you remember the last challenges, FIWARE Smart Society Challenge and FIWARE Excellence Challenge? Those whose prizes were awarded at a multi-site event that took place in Seville, Valencia and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) at the same time. All of the ideas were good enough to deserve an award, but only some of them could get one. And this is how some winners of the challenges see FIWARE:

We are pretty sure that some these participants may sound familiar to you. Do you recognize them? They, winners of FIWARE awards and grants, are the developers of some of the demos that were present at Smart City Expo World Congress 2014, in our wonderful stand designed by Boa Mistura. Among them, for instance, you will find OutBarriers or EsAccesibleApp. This shows that from hackathons, challenges and startup weekends, great ideas arise and become established in this ecosystem that, together with cities opening their data and developers longing to use our generic enablers, FIWARE is creating.

Outbarriers, which has placed itself as one of the examples of FIWARE success, is now not only present at our events (link in Spanish). Its technology is reaching a real market that is opening up a world of possibilities. Last month, the hotel Alhambra Palace from Granada, Outbarriers’ hometown, signed an agreement with them to equip the hotel with this system, to help blind people move safely through the hall, the corridors, the restaurant and all the different rooms. According to the information published in LaInformacion.com (in Spanish), and considering that the hotel is not only a place to stay, but also a building of artistic interest, Outbarriers may also be used as an audio guide.

Juan José Bilbao, developer of EsAccesibleApp (SP), also attended Smart City Expo World Congress, where he explained to all those who were interested how his app can summarize information about accessibility of public and private spaces all around the world. An initiative that started as a personal project has now engaged lots of people that, according to the developer himself, are now updating the data base with new places and evaluations. The presence of both Outbarriers and EsAccesibleApp at Smart City Expo reminds us that building smart cities also means building cities where all citizens can live on equal terms.

But these were not the only awarded apps at FIWARE Challenges, others like BiT, SixCampus, Cares, FI-Guardian, FoneSense or Wadjet, among others, were also recognized for the wonderful use of FIWARE that they make. FIWARE would like to congratulate all participants again; because, in the end, all of them were great examples of how to use FIWARE to build new services that can improve cities and society. We hope that events to come keep building this community around FIWARE and all the possibilities that it offers.